For freedom and liberty, low taxes, less government, high social capital, and strong national defense

Friday, October 27, 2006

Fixing Islam

Australia's top Muslim preacher gets a wrist slap from his fellows for telling Muslim men to rape women they consider immodest. That suggests rape is at the heart of Islam, explaining why Islamic societies are such failures, and how we can help them modernize.The report (hat tip Tim Blair here, here, and here):

The nation's most senior Muslim cleric has blamed immodestly dressed women who don't wear Islamic headdress for being preyed on by men and likened them to abandoned "meat" that attracts voracious animals.

In a Ramadan sermon that has outraged Muslim women leaders, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.

While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress ... "and then you get a judge without mercy(rahma) and gives you 65 years".

Skaf is the young man who led a gang of young men in multiple pack rapes in Sydney in the weeks before the 2000 Olympics.

Skaf summoned his mates by mobile phone for the attacks. In August 2002, he was convicted on 21 counts of aggravated rape, assault and kidnapping.

Rape is punished severely in most human societies. According to evolutionary biologists, that's because women invest much more capital than men in bearing and raising the next generation and so have to be much more choosy about their partners. Rape overrides their choice and enables the less fit to propagate themselves (assuming the raped woman can't abort the child). A rapist society breeds more rapists and competes poorly against societies where mothers choose their kids' fathers.The evolutionary consequence is that humans are hardwired to reduce their propensity to rape, with behaviors such as reciprocity, trust, altruism, and the ability to recognize dishonesty.These hardwired behaviors have enabled us to build industrialized economies driven by teams of creative engineers and scientists and defended by disciplined and well-equipped armies.Societies that promote rape override this hardwiring, so not only do they brutalize half of their members but they also make themselves unable to build, create or fight. And that would explain why Muslims can only attack us by subterfuge and using our own technologies, why their societies are the least productive and must corrupt in the world, and their armies are easily beaten.The good news is that we can help Islam modernize simply by encouraging it to abandon its brutalization of women. The despised French seem to be doing the best job (WSJ, $, my ellipsis):

According to a Pew Global Attitudes survey published in July, 42% of French Muslims consider themselves French first; 47%, Muslim first...In Britain, the numbers are 7% British first; 81%, Muslim first.France's anti-terrorism laws are the toughest anywhere in the Western world. French prosecutors can hold terror suspects for years without charge; the definition of "links to terrorism" is loose. Every mosque in France is monitored. Since 9/11, the government has cracked down on foreign financing and moved to train "French imams."

The Australian government should follow the French lead, and prosecute the rape-advocate & deport him to his native Egypt at the end of his sentence.